The Sovanco Fracture Zone is a right lateral-moving

transform fault A transform fault or transform boundary, is a fault along a plate boundary where the motion is predominantly horizontal. It ends abruptly where it connects to another plate boundary, either another transform, a spreading ridge, or a subducti ...

and associated

fracture zone A fracture zone is a linear feature on the ocean floor—often hundreds, even thousands of kilometers long—resulting from the action of offset mid-ocean ridge axis segments. They are a consequence of plate tectonics. Lithospheric plates on ei ...

located offshore of

Vancouver Island Vancouver Island is an island in the northeastern Pacific Ocean and part of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The island is in length, in width at its widest point, and in total area, while are of land. The island is the largest by ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

. It runs between the northern end of the

Juan de Fuca Ridge The Juan de Fuca Ridge is a mid-ocean spreading center and divergent plate boundary located off the coast of the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The ridge separates the Pacific Plate to the west and the Juan de Fuca Plate to the eas ...

and the southern end of the

Explorer Ridge The Explorer Ridge is a mid-ocean ridge, a divergent tectonic plate boundary located about west of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. It lies at the northern extremity of the Pacific spreading axis. To its east is the Explorer P ...

, forming part of the boundary between the

Pacific Plate The Pacific Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. At , it is the largest tectonic plate. The plate first came into existence 190 million years ago, at the triple junction between the Farallon, Phoenix, and I ...

and the Explorer Plate. To its west lies the Explorer Seamount.

References

Cowan, Darrel S.; Botros, Mona; Johnson, H. Paul, 1986, ''Bookshelf tectonics: rotated crustal blocks within the Sovanco fracture zone'', Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 13, Issue 10, p. 995-998, abstract
{{BritishColumbiaCoast-geo-stub Fracture zones Geology of British Columbia South Coast of British Columbia Oceanography of Canada